Which view makes sense of the fossil record ?

Really? Honestly, I don't read much creationist literature any more. I just find it too unreliable and ends up being a waste of time. The thing is that I don't think there are two creationists who can agree on the details of flood geology, since they don't really have an objective methodology to their madness.However, my "out-of-date view" is still quite mainstream creationist thought. How about:

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When most people visit Grand Canyon in northern Arizona, their eyes are riveted on the spectacular walls, which display about 4,000 feet (1.2 km) of flat-lying sedimentary rock layers (limestones, sandstones, and shales). Filled with the buried remains of plants and animals, these layers must have been deposited during the Flood, which God sent to destroy every living substance on the face of the earth. -(emphasis mine)

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SourceOr this:

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However, it supposedly took 270 million years to deposit these particular layers. Surely in that time the Tapeats Sandstone at the bottom would have dried out and the sand grains cemented together, especially with 4,000 feet (1,220 m) of rock layers piled on top of it and pressing down on it? The only viable scientific explanation is that the whole sequence was deposited very quicklythe creation model indicates that it took less than a year, during the global Flood cataclysm. So the 520 million years never happened, and the earth is young. (emphasis mine)

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SourceHere is a couple of examples of why creationist sources are a waste of time. In this article we would expect to find billions and billions of fossil organisms.

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The countless billions and billions of fossils in these graveyards, in many cases exquisitely preserved, testify to the rapid burial of once-living plants and animals on a global scale in a watery cataclysm and its immediate aftermath... When we again read the biblical account of the Flood and ask ourselves what evidence we should expect, the answer is obviousbillions of dead plants and animals buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the world. And that’s exactly what we find.

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And then in this article they excuse the lack of human fossils in lower layers on the extreme rarity of fossil preservation.

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Thus the vertebrates (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) together make up very little of the fossil recordin fact, 5% of 5%, which is a mere 0.25% of the entire fossil record. So comparatively speaking there are very, very few amphibian, reptile, bird and mammal fossils, yet so much is often made of them. For example, the number of dinosaur skeletons in all the world’s museums (both public and university) totals only about 2,100. Furthermore, of this 0.25% of the fossil record which is vertebrates, only 1% of that 0.25% (or 0.0025%) are vertebrate fossils that consist of more than a single bone!

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Now if there are billions and billions (2 billion) of fossils (as we would expect from a flood) and only .25% are vertebrate, that should be 5 million vertebrate fossils. Can't these people do simple math? Or do they lie on purpose?In the article you cited, the author puts the flood/post flood boundary at the late Cenozoic. I am not sure where he puts the start of the flood, but Cenozoic is pretty much the entire geological record of sedimentary rocks.So I am not all that mis-informed after all.HBDEdited by herebedragons, : typo

Do you realize that coelacanth is an order of bony fish, not a species. It is not like a single species survived 65 million years without notice. Put this in perspective with this chart of the Order Coelacanthiformes genera, including extinct and extant genera. That 65 million years that coelacanth "went missing" is barely a hiccup in the overall picture. The question was: How does YEC explain the order of the fossil record? Your answer amounts to "all answers are equally valid." We don't want you to argue for Faith. Let's hear your explaination for how flood geology explains the fossil record. But you haven't given us your position. Just some rhetoric about how we don't respect creationist ponderings.HBD

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Your analogy isn't accurate, because it only would represent the fossil record and I am not saying there isn't a fossil record, I am saying there isn't an evolutionary-order, except the one assigned to match it by Darwin et al.

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That's a very silly thing to say. Do you actually understand the concept of explanation Mikey? Do you understand what it means to say that evolutionary theory explains the order ? Because if you do, you know that what you said isn't true.

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1. There is a fossil record.
2. There is an evolution-history that matches it.

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I would ask: "why does it match it?"
The answer you would have to give is; "Because Darwin wrote that it did."

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The answer that an honest person would have to give is "most likely because evolution is true". The relationship between evolutionary theory and the fossil record as we now know it has nothing to do with what Darwin wrote.

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Think about it, would he, knowing the evidence, predict that the forms at the bottom were the most recent, modern forms? So whatever the fossils showed, would guarantee an evolution-pattern. THINK! if the fossils were reversed, he would have said that humans were the common ancestor of many forms, because they would be at the bottom. Thus whatever the fossil record shows, was always going to fit with evolution, no matter what the record means in actual fact.

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If the fossils were reversed exactly then there would be a pattern that needed explaining but it's not one that fits comfortably with evolutionary theory. So no, Darwin couldn't just say that he'd have to come up with a theory that was quite different.But what if the order actually fitted well with creationist flood geology? Wouldn't that be even worse for evolution than your reversed order ?

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Thus, the plasticity of evolution is preserved, and you hear it in their statements all the time such as, "it seems mammals were already quite well developed and modern given this hair preserved in amber" So they. "push back" evolution and IGNORE the incorrect evolutionary prediction.

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That's more an adjustment to the history of life than to evolutionary theory. Pushing mammals back a bit has no implications for the theory at all.

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I find three balls on a table, one is blue and on the left, two are red and on the right. I then have a theory that they have been placed there because there seems to be an order. I state in my theory that the red ones on the right were put there on purpose and then I demand; "now refute me by showing there is no order!"

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Of course this is another Mikey strawman. First it uses only three balls so pure chance is a viable explanation. Second, and more important there is no demand to refute the order, showing a better explanation for the order would be an adequate and better reply. And THAT is the point of this thread. I didn't ask for the order to be refuted, I asked which side has the better explanation.Now in your "example" you could easily win by the criterion of parsimony by pointing out that, with only three balls, the pattern is to weak to require any explanation other than chance. But you can't do that with the fossil record. Chance isn't a viable explanation.

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The fossil record is interpreted as a grave-yard of evolution instead of a graveyard of a mass-burial, watery catastrophism,

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Because the order we see is one more likely to be produced by the processes of evolution than it is by the processes of a "mass burial watery catastrophism". That is why the order is evidence for evolution. That is why evolution offers the better explanation of the fossil record. And that is the fact you are so desperately trying to deny.

I think Mike was referring to the entire, if I may use the phrase, geologic column rather than just the Grand Canyon.

I tried really hard to make sense of what your objection here really is. I think it boils down to this: We make an observation and then develop a theory based on that observation. The original observation is not then considered evidence in favor of our theory. In a way, that is a valid point especially in a simplistic model like your colored ball illustration. However, it is a complete oversimplification of the the actual situation.Darwin made several observations including the fossil record, bio-geographic distributions, similar but distinct species, through which he recognized patterns of distribution through time and space and patterns of variation.He developed his theory as an explanation for why those patterns that he observed existed. Actually, at this point, theory is not the correct term to use. What Darwin wrote was more of a thesis. The evidence he cited was intended to justify his thesis. Imagine if when I write my Masters thesis I am not allowed to use the evidence that I collect over the next 2 or so years that I work on my project to write my thesis. That would be silly; the evidence supports, or justifies, my thesis (if it doesn't, I won't pass my exams).In order for Darwin's thesis to become elevated to the status of theory, it would need to be supported by additional evidence. Not the same evidence he used to justify it originally, it needed to be additional evidence. But it could be evidence of the same type as Darwin used originally; what else would it be? So do additional observations confirm the original observations? Do new observations fit into the patterns that Darwin used?Another point, Darwin is hardly the final authority on evolution. I don't know why he always comes up in these types of discussions. While he had the general idea right, he was wrong on so much of it. We have so moved past Darwinian evolution. We have now moved through NeoDarwinism and into the Modern Synthesis. And I believe that within 10 years we will have moved past the Modern Synthesis and into a new era of evolutionary theory. Each stage building on the previous and expanding it based on new knowledge.Here's an illustration: Darwin observed a sentence that looked like this:_ _ o _ _ _ _ _ n _ _ _ _ _ n _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ m _He theorized that the sentence said "Evolution is change into time" (they talked weird back then)NeoDarwinism made new discoveries.E _ o _ _ _ i _ n _ s _ _ _ n g _ _ _ _ _ t _ m _The new discoveries confirmed Darwin's original thesis. The Modern Synthesis made some new discoveries that largely confirmed Darwin's thesis, but found some flaws in it.E _ o l u _ i o n _ s c h _ n g _ _ v e _ t _ m eNow we can see that it actually says: "Evolution is change over time."Sure we don't have every piece of the puzzle yet, but all the pieces we have support the theory.Now what your contention is is that Darwin's original observations are not part of the evidence that this sentence says what it says. In fact, you seem to say that even subsequent observations are not evidence since they are of the same type as Darwin used.So, again the question is: "How does YEC explain the evidence better?" The YEC thesis says the sentence reads "The earth is only 6,000 years old." how does that fit with the evidence we have that looks like this:E _ o l u _ i o n _ s c h _ n g _ _ v e _ t _ m eNote: This was an illustration not actual evidence HBD

It becomes like a shell game with creationists. The best I can make out of it is the flood deposited the "fossil bearing" layers of sediment. However, they can shuffle the shells around to say geological column, Grand Canyon, pretty much whatever supports the notion at the time. I have found very little objective criteria as to what THE flood deposits are. The article Mike cited from CMI does about the best job of it. However, defining flood boundaries is only the very first step in supporting the idea.HBD

Pat, I'd like to solve the puzzle ...

Too bad it didn't land on $5000, this one's a softball. HBD

Yup. Notice that Mike has so far ignored my request for the consensus on those boundaries. I surmise that's because for every "major" boundary there's a creationist who thinks it's a fludde boundary.

Repeating the subtitle, the modern coelacanth is an extreme deepwater marine fish.I think that any creature living or having lived in that environment is highly unlikely to make it to any fossil deposit that man can see. Why? Because we find marine fossils when and where the seas have transgressed up onto the continents.Further reading on preservation of deep marine sedimentation - Mlange
To the geologists - Please shoot me down if I'm wrong.Moose

That's a very good point. Also very unlikely to be preserved in the first place. Deep marine sediments accumulate very slowly, like at the rate of less than 5 cm per 1000 years. At that rate it would take several thousand years just to cover a 6' coelacanth skeleton. This article is about breccia that forms at continental margins. Perhaps you were referring to how slumping and gravity flows related to formation of Mlange would cover deep ocean sediments?Or perhaps you meant to reference Pelagic sediment. Not sure.Either way, its a good point that deep water coelacanths would be unlikely to preserve. I quickly looked for information on ancestral species, and it appears that early coelacanths were not deep water fish. I am not really clear on this though, since most information is on the modern species.HBDEdited by herebedragons, : No reason given.

As the article says, there are multiple ways of creating a melange. In fact, if Faith wanted to make a case for some kind of 'under strata' deformation, some of these would be a possibility (although the rocks look entirely different since these are breccia and not layered sediments such as the GC Super Group ... it would be a huge stretch).A discussion would be a bit off-topic, but suffice it to say that melanges tell us a lot about active continental margins (usually convergent boundaries - subduction zones, etc.) and the antiquity of the the planet. Look up the 'Franciscan Formation' in California for some interesting facts.

Afaik\iirc all the (current) fossils that are at the 65+ million year end of the "gap" were found in shallow water environments (the issue of access to the fossil beds).Living fossils like the Coelacanth

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So, where do dry-land rocks come from? Well, some were formed on land, and some in fresh water, and some in shallow sea water. But very few were formed in deep sea water. Plate tectonics makes it clear why this should be. The deep ocean floor is constantly being destroyed, sucked down into the earth at subduction zones. It is unlikely for a piece of deep ocean floor to wind up as a dry-land rock.

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For more information on their diversity and specific characteristics see:Palaeos Vertebrates Sarcopterygii: Overview
Palaeos Vertebrates Sarcopterygii: Actinistia: Hadronector
Palaeos Vertebrates Sarcopterygii : Actinistia
Palaeos: Very Incomplete Sitemap(palaeos is (or was) a massive linked website on fossils and their divisions\cladograms, but is undergoing a major overhaul and so many links no longer work properly. You can search the site for specifics.)But I came up blank on habitat of the fossils ... but with their diversity I would not be surprised that they used to inhabit a number of ecologically diverse depth environments.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : clrty

IIRC, the coelacanth was at one time thought to be the direct ancestor of tetrapods, and while that has been more recently amended, it would suggest that at least some of the early forms were found in more shallow waters. They also thought that the coelacanth used its fins to walk on the sea floor, which also was later amended.HBD

Michael Oard was a metereologist. Carl Wieland was a medical doctor.Don't think they can say too much about fossils. I'd rather get my information from the appropriate specialists who publish in the relevant peer-reviewed scientific journals.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.